


Ink

by ssstrychnine



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Tattoos, cheedo and dag as history women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4202856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cheedo and Dag keep history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ink

Cheedo is born in the Citadel. She is born and grown and picked, a piece of perfect fruit. She thinks, perhaps, she is the daughter of a milking mother, but she cannot be sure. She thinks, perhaps, she is the daughter of an Imperator, but she cannot be sure. Mostly, most _importantly_ , she is a Wife. 

Dag is not born in the Citadel. She is the flyaway child of a dead man with blue eyes and a dead woman with long fingers. She is found by War Boys, stained with ash and gunpowder. She is taken to the Citadel because she’s bright as a headlight under the dirt, and maybe Immortan Joe will want to keep her.

They meet in a room of glass and water. Dag has been there a long time already, with Capable and Angharad and Toast. Cheedo has spent her whole life in the Citadel, but she is still the youngest, and the last. Miss Giddy murmurs words of comfort as she is walked to the Vault. Cheedo doesn't know why she would need comfort, she has spent her whole life _waiting_ for this, but Miss Giddy does it all the same. Cheedo reads the words tattooed on her skin and thinks that one day, if she gives Joe perfect children, her name might be written there too. 

Miss Giddy passes her on to the Wives, and Toast narrows her eyes, and Capable smiles, and Angharad takes her by the hand. Dag, with long limbs and white hair, stares at her.

“You’ll be left alone for awhile at least,” she says.

“But I don’t want to be left alone,” says Cheedo, confused, and Angharad’s grip on her hand tightens.

Dag watches Cheedo when she meets Immortan Joe for the first time. She watches her hands, curled into fists at her sides, and her mouth, a set line, and her eyes, dark as oil and hiding fear. She moves closer to the younger girl, and takes her hand, twines their fingers together, and Joe nods. He likes his Wives to like one another. Dag wants to spit on him and pull Cheedo away, but she just rests her cheek against her hair, and holds her hand until he has gone and she has stopped trembling. 

It does not take long for Cheedo to decide that being left alone is the best thing she could hope for. Miss Giddy lets her read the words scrawled into the soles of her feet, faded and warped when the dead skin falls away, _Immortan Joe is not a man, but a monster_. Cheedo folds these words into tiny pieces and stores them in some far corner of her brain. She tells Angharad, because Angharad is the First, and Angharad looks sad.

“We are not things,” she says, slowly, carefully, and Cheedo nods, though she still has not quite grasped what it means. She has lived in locked rooms for her whole life. 

Dag kisses her in the water. Because she is beautiful, because she is sad. They have been given belts now, and Furiosa guards their room and does not speak. Dag kisses her knuckles, and then her shoulder, and then her mouth, and Cheedo hums against her lips, and smiles. To make Cheedo smile is Dag’s favourite thing to do, and she kisses her again, and Cheedo keeps smiling. 

When Dag is told she is pregnant, with bruises still fading across her eyes, and her fingers still crooked, Cheedo quietly decides she will love this child, even if Dag hates it. They are connected, wrist to wrist, cheek to cheek, heart to heart. Miss Giddy tattoos a sun on Dag’s finger, and dots, and lines.

“This is your history,” says Cheedo.

“The sun is you,” says Dag.

Angharad falls, and Cheedo can feel the desert desert under her skin, turning her blood to oil. She tries to go back because four walls must be better than no walls, and a lock must be better than nothing, as far as the eye can see. She is a kite cut loose and she runs, because Angharad’s words are behind them in blood and dust. Dag pulls her back, because she always does, because she has tattoos on her fingers, because she is wearing one of Cheedo’s gloves. She goes back too, because although it is not safe anywhere, she feels safest with Dag.

After, when Dag has claimed her seeds, and Cheedo has claimed her steel, they send salvagers to the wreckage of the War Rig, and the Doof Wagon, and every other broken piece of Immortan Joe. They need the metal, and the guzz, and the wheels, but they want to know what happened to Miss Giddy too. They aren't given answers, they aren't given anything except one of the needles she used to tattoo her skin and keep her hair back. Dag takes it, and writes Cheedo’s name under her skin, and Cheedo smiles, and does the same, down the length of her thumb. 

It is Dag’s idea that they should keep history, just as she keeps seeds. She writes their story on her arms and the span of skin under her collarbones. Cheedo starts to do it after Dag has her baby, a tuft of a thing with eyes like pools of water, a tiny Angharad. Cheedo writes _the second Angharad, born to Dag, the second Keeper of the Seeds, and Cheedo, Mother of the Citadel_ , across her ribs, and it makes Dag smile. 

Theirs is a history that cannot be read without them both. Their stories weave across their bodies, stretching from Cheedo to Dag, and back again. They write about the milking mothers, and the pups, and the Wretched. They write about Capable and Toast and Angharad. They write about Furiosa, and Max, who comes back when Dag’s left arm and Cheedo’s right hand, are covered in ink, and who leaves when Dag starts on her left foot and Cheedo is scrawling up her right arm.

They write the stories that don’t travel the Wastes on their own. There is a milking mother named Dawn, and she once saw a man on a flying machine. There is a girl called Capable, and once she loved a boy called Nux. There are drawings carved into the wall of Organic’s old meat shop. Dag’s favourite flower is the Darling River Rose. These are quiet histories, but important in their way, and they are kept by girls who once were wives.

**Author's Note:**

> I love these girls, I really do. This was written for a prompt on tumblr. I'm @oneangryshot if you wanna say hello. Thank you for reading!


End file.
